reflections on conservation in Africa

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Hello and thank you for visiting my blog, Conservation Conundrums.

I started this blog because I often find myself contemplating the ways in which conservation of the natural world is failing in Africa – failing the environment, failing the wildlife and failing the local people – and how these shortcomings are not properly published or addressed. I hope my posts provide meaningful insight into the complex nature of conservation and provide ideas on solutions to some of the many problems conservation faces. I have a few set topics I will explore but things will no doubt come from my daily experiences and observations in conservation in Zambia, and from stories I’ve heard from colleagues, family and friends.

I have an academic background in wildlife management and ecology (to put it simply). My personal interests are fire ecology, perceptions of conservation and conservation NGO’s, the role of hunting in conservation, the strained relationships between the various parties involved in conservation and community-run conservation. I grew up, and was educated, in Zambia and completed my university education in South Africa.

There are some ground rules for this blog, I expect you to:

be respectful of my posts and of any and all comments published, whether or not you agree with the content

read the entire post or comment before you respond

support your comments with well researched information or valid life experience, not just use things from books or TV

share your experiences where appropriate to help raise awareness of the complexity of conservation in Africa

share any posts you agree with, or not, on social media platforms to get the discussion going around the world.

And, obviously, I claim intellectual ownership of everything I author on this site.

P.S. I may occasionally use a swear word here and there, if you take offence I apologise but sometimes a well placed ‘fuck’ says a lot more than any eloquent string of Oxford English words. Some believe this would indicate my lack of a firm grasp of the English language, I do not.